Monthly Archive: October 2014

31

I reviewed the audiobook version of Mr. Gaffigan’s Dad is Fat for Cannonball Read 5. He’s back with a new book, which I only discovered because of its prominent display at the bookstore, and the cover. The cover is clever – a cake topper version of Mr. Gaffigan next to a cake topper version of a hot dog, on top of a fancy wedding cake.

The book behind the cover is a nice, light, entertaining read. It’s a bit of a mishmash, with everything connected to Mr. Gaffigan’s love of food. But not in a ‘foodie’ way. Nope, this is about his love of all food, not just artisanal cheese from locally sourced cows. Sure, he devotes a fair amount of space to fancy steak, but a lot of it is about things like McDonalds, hot dogs, and pizza. It’s a hodgepodge that seems even more disconnected than your average collection of essays, and yet it still works. It’s something I appreciate, especially as I am someone who loves food as well.

In the beginning he talks through his view of the food that each region of the U.S. is known for, from coffee in the Pacific Northwest to crab in Maryland. As an aside, he is not a fan of the seafood the east coast loves – he refers to lobster and crab as sea bugs. I can relate. As a comedian who travels for a living, he is in the somewhat rare position of being able to share a pretty well-informed opinion about the different food available in cities across the U.S., large and small. Not many of us can say we’ve eaten in dozens of towns across the fifty states.

The book took a while to get going for me, but once it did, I found myself giggling and cackling, annoying my husband as I insisted on reading passage after passage out loud to him. The book is fun, and a nice read for when everything else has been just a little too much. October was a mostly shitty month in many ways, and an exhausting one at work, so this was what I needed. It isn’t perfect – the beginning does wander dangerously close to fat shaming – but for the most part it’s a nice palate cleanser between the heavier stuff.

30

This experiment with the blog post a day has been fun and interesting. Not all posts have been winners – and I’m pretty sure my last one is just going to be some Halloween costume pictures. But it’s forced me to work on my writing, to be creative, and to form and articulate my opinion on things more regularly that the occasional random (and usually irate) posting.

I’m not going to stick with it, though, because November is also NaNoWriMo (national novel writing month). While I’m not trying to write a novel, I am writing a book, and I’m going to focus my writing on that during November. But I’m sure I’ll be back on here for the occasional book review, weekly wrap-up, and angry tirade.

29

28

So, short post, but I had to share that after my post last night about Navient, I got a tweet from their social media people. Note that I didn’t tag them or @ them in the post; their company name just happened to be in my post, and they must have done a search. At 7 a.m. I got the following tweet:

“Hi Ashley! We’re going to look into this for you. A social media specialist will be reaching out to you today. Thanks! Liz”

Now, my post talked about how they were somehow even worse than Sallie Mae. But now I realize they actually are still Sallie Mae. Just re-branded. And just like how when Blackwater changed its name to Xe Services it didn’t suddenly stop being a firm full of mercenaries for hire, Sallie Mae hasn’t stopped taking advantage of customers just because it changed its name.

No one from Navient contacted me today – either in response to my email from yesterday or as part of their social media strategy. I don’t really expect to hear much from them at all, actually, beyond eventually some letter telling me my loans are paid off. And when we get that letter in the mail, or on email, I think I’m going to frame it.

And then I am going to do a very happy dance as confirm that I never have to deal with that company again.

27

As I mentioned in a post a couple of weeks ago, the Mister and I recently paid off all of our major student loans. It took a couple of tries due to the amounts owed, but we did it, and we reveled in checking the site after the amounts cleared out bank: $0 owed. Then yesterday we noticed that Navient still automatically debited the Mister’s loan payment. He signed in and saw a negative balance on one of his loans for that amount, and also noticed that instead of a zero balance on his other loan, he has a positive balance of $.43. That’s right. Forty-three cents. When he called, they explained that since it takes two days to process, they keep charging that interest. So basically it’s an impossible task to pay off a loan early; every time you pay, there’s a two day lag where you’ll accrue interest.

The woman he spoke with said they would ‘write off’ the $.43 (how generous!), and would turn off the automatic debit for the other loans. First off – how can an auto debit still happen when you have a zero balance? That’s just … what? You don’t owe anything, so there shouldn’t be anything for them to take. Or if there are still a few cents, shouldn’t it just take that? Second – they said we’ll get the money back … in 30-45 days. Will they be sending us interest on that? My guess is no.

Given what the Mister experienced, I decided to sign in and make sure my loan showed a zero balance. Nope. I still owe $.83. What. The. Hell. I have no patience with student loan companies, so instead of calling I sent an email asking for explicit instructions as to how to pay off that eighty-three cents, as well as a letter showing the loan is paid in full, along with a guarantee in writing that they have cancelled the auto-debit on that account while maintaining the auto debit on the one loan we have left. I … do not have high hopes.

This is kind of amazing. Imagine if we didn’t have the extra money that they took from us for that auto-debit? What if that had overdrawn our bank account? Or if we hadn’t checked on the accounts to make sure they still showed a zero balance (which they actually did a week ago), and thus never sent a payment, and ended up getting penalties and credit dings for late payments? I mean, student loan companies are already the worst; it’s kind of amazing that they find new ways to screw with their ‘customers.’ Given this latest development, we’ve decided to hit the savings and just pay off the final small loan. It’s not worth it anymore. I’d rather have less of a cushion than have any part of me relying on Navient to do its job.

– “There’s this herd of people, mainly angsty teenage caucasian men (based on an informal survey of 99 percent of the people who feel the need to defend this nonsense to me on Twitter), who feel that somehow, their identity as “gamers” is being taken away. ” Why #Gamergaters Piss Me The F*** Off (h/t @Karnythia)

– “A friend reminded me of all of the other recent shootings/stabbings/ violence like this. ‘Jesus f*cking Christ,’ she says. ‘Was it always like this and we’re only hearing about it more now?'” Entitled to Women: When Saying No Leads to Violence (h/t @Legal_Voice)

– “Its development stalled in part because Ebola is rare, and until now, outbreaks had infected only a few hundred people at a time. But experts also acknowledge that the absence of follow-up on such a promising candidate reflects a broader failure to produce medicines and vaccines for diseases that afflict poor countries.” Ebola Vaccine, Ready for Test, Sat on the Shelf (h/t @leftiblog)

– “In her statement declaring the state of emergency and the cremation order, Sirleaf acknowledged the edict runs contrary to national tradition. “Ebola has attacked our way of life,” she said.” Cremation fears leave empty Ebola beds in Liberia (via @AP)

– “While a few of those interviewed said an overabundance of caution was welcome, the vast majority said that restrictions like those adopted by New York and New Jersey could cripple volunteers’ efforts at the front lines of the epidemic.” New Ebola Quarantine Protocol Seen as Barrier to Volunteers (h/t @charlesornstein)

– “People love to talk about sex work as ‘selling your body’, but I am yet to meet a sex worker who, upon completing a job, is suddenly rendered incorporeal. Sex workers do not sell their bodies – they sell a service. ” I Don’t Care If You Call Me A Whore (via @jaythenerdkid)

25

As part of my attempt to sort out my IRS issue, I decided to pull everything I have in storage. The goal was to see if I still have a bunch of old documents from when I first purchased the stock in question. I did (hurrah!), but I also realized that I had a lot of other stuff that I don’t really need.

An example is my pile middle school and high school yearbooks. This might be controversial for some folks, but I have no real need for my yearbooks. I don’t ever go back and look at the notes written, or even the pictures. That might be because I’ve always loved taking pictures, so I’ve got a lot of pictures from when I was younger. And those giant books take up a whole lot of space considering how often I look at them.

Another example is the giant stack of articles and papers from my studies in London. That took up an entire plastic bin, and it was much harder to part with. On the one hand, I have all my notes and papers saved online and backed up. But on the other hand, I probably can’t access the list of articles I read again. It seemed a little bit like accepting that I won’t be pursuing further study in the field. Which is accurate, and has been accurate for a couple of years, but the finality of actually throwing it in the recycling bin gave me pause. Still, I did it, it’s gone.

Other items, like photo negatives and my college diploma, I’m keeping, but I was able to consolidate way down. I also pulled out my old homecoming tiara and sash to give to a friend’s daughter to play dress-up. By the time I was done, I’d reduced three 2′ x 2′ x 2′ tubs to a handful of items that I could spread throughout the apartment. As a bonus, our storage unit now only has Austin’s climbing and camping gear (which wouldn’t be in the house anyway), and a taken-apart bistro table and chairs that we hope to use when we finally buy a place to live some day.

Austin is going to clean out the guest room closet on Sunday, which hopefully will result in a big trip to Goodwill in the afternoon. The key now is to not buy things that will fill that space back up.

24

Today I took a break from my Ebola preparedness work to check the news. And I saw that there was another school shooting, at a high school in the county just north of ours. My first thought was to see if this was looking like a mass fatality incident, and if it would make sense for me to call up and offer some assistance. It looks like ‘only’ two people (including the shooter) are dead, but others are severely wounded.

Are you guys tired? Because I am. I’m tired of gun violence in my community. I’m tired of the gun violence that gets the news coverage (suburban school shootings where ‘you don’t expect it’), and the gun violence that doesn’t get the news coverage (the shootings in areas where, apparently, it’s totally okay for the media to suggest that ‘you expect it’). We have an election in our state next week where there is an initiative on the ballot requiring background checks for sales at gun shows, and I will be voting for it. I love what Allison Kilkenny says in her book #Newsfail: this isn’t about gun control, this is about massacre prevention.

I don’t know how to express how frustrating this is, and how sad I am for the families, the school and the community. Some things you just can’t prevent, either because there’s nothing that can be done, or the cost of prevention would be just too high. This is not one of these instances. There are things we can do, and the costs are not too high.

23

A few months ago we got a notice from the IRS saying we hadn’t paid our taxes for 2013. We had (and had the fat chunk of missing savings to prove it). Of course the notice arrived after 5 p,m. on a Friday, but I was able to get a hold of someone and after a couple of hang-ups, an hour on hold, and some frustrating moments, I confirmed that it was an error. Before that my only other run-in with the IRS was due to an old business license. Their system didn’t update that I had closed that business with no income (I’d gotten it so I could do consulting work if needed when I moved back to Seattle), so I thought maybe this was yet another attempt to collect taxes from defunct business. Especially since it was addressed to my given name and not my current name.

Nope. Nothing to do with our 2013 taxes, or my non-existent business. From what I can tell, someone screwed up, and I might owe a whole lot of money (like, high four figures). It looks like a company I had securities with is reporting that I made X amount of money from that, and I didn’t report it as income, so I owe about 20% of X, plus a bunch of penalties and interest. First off, I never got that tax document. If you know me, you know how super duper anal I am about things like finances. If it turns out my information was wrong, and I do owe that money, I will pay it, although I’m not okay with paying penalties or interest because I didn’t actually do anything wrong based on the information I had. Also, because I’m so anal, my first thought was to log into my accounts and look for late tax documents, or something I could have missed, but the ones I view don’t match up. If they were there and they matched, that’d be that. But it’s a little hard to prove the negative of I never got it (although the fact that it still isn’t here does help).

Oh, and did I mention that this is from two years ago? Not last year, but 2012. So I’m even more confused, because why didn’t that information come out when they do their regular checks in the twenty months that have passed since that tax year ended. But thanks to some advice my mother gave me when my checks were stolen in 2001, along with my last experience with the IRS, plus Austin’s general calming influence in my attitude, I didn’t lose my shit. I didn’t pick up the phone and try to get someone to answer all my questions. I ate my dinner, turned on a crappy movie, and started doing research so that I could figure out what to say when I do finally call tomorrow. Because the reality is I might end up having to dig super deep into savings to fix an error I unintentionally made in 2012 (if it all ends up being correct). And me being angry about it right now, or being short with the unlucky IRS agent who takes my call, isn’t actually going to change any of that.

22

I have not watched this movie in years. I’m not going to say it ‘holds up’ in that it is timeless, but it does, in a way, hold up. The decor gives away the decade (80s), but the clothing … not so much. Shelby’s honeymoon suit could be found, more or less, in any department store these days. And although the hairstyles are dated, the shirts that the guys are wearing could be found at American Apparel. It’s weird.

The story is as dramatic as I remember, and man, the dialogue is super cheesey but it’s also super awesome. I’m finding that I remember so many of the lines. I mean, I’m pretty sure at least once a holiday season I ask someone if they have a reindeer up their butt. Even the lines that are just too over the top somehow work. Maybe it’s because I first saw this when I was really young so I didn’t bat an eye at so much sincerity in one place.

There are obviously some problems with it (for example, the only black people in it were housekeepers or wedding guests). But it’s really cool to think about this as a movie that explores not just mother-daughter relationships, but relationships among older women. I mean, look at that cast. These are women in their 40s and 50s, and they have conversations about silly things and real things. I don’t know how the film was marketed when it originally came out, but as I get older I appreciate it more.